


Mothers of Gods

by LuciensLibrary



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, I Don't Even Know, Internet, Kinks, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Multi, OT3, Pseudo-Incest, Step-siblings, mothers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26353312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuciensLibrary/pseuds/LuciensLibrary
Summary: The future to where they come back to is... different. The price they paid for a world without the Apocalypse is not obvious at first, but it soon becomes apparent that they had lost people and memories of a past that never was, and gained a whole array of different ones. But Klaus has to admit, this... internet thing, this is interesting.-Aka.: They come back from the sixties to a world where there is a thing called internet, and nobody is sure if that is a good thing or not.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves/Diego Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 9
Kudos: 54





	1. Blessed is the memory (of everybody's child)

**Author's Note:**

> This is cannon compliant right up until the moment they come back to 2019, and then it goes into an alternative universe where, instead of Ol' Reggie, they are greeted back by Pogo and Mom, and there is no Sparrow Academy. I'm following just a bunch of semi independent ideas I had about the world of the Hargreeves children and trying to turn this mess into some coherent story that also happens to contain a lot of Klaus being a magnificent incestuous train-wreck (eventually).  
> I didn't revised this.  
> I didn't plot this.  
> Really, if you decide to read it I applaud your courage and ask for your forgiveness.

Ben flickers into Klaus vision for a fraction of a second when they land, blue and frozen, and a cynical voice on the back of his head, a voice that sounds like Sir Reginald still, wonders what kinds of permanent damage he had done on his brain with all those sixties recently invented LSD papers.

  
“Oh god..” Luther grunts, while everyone but Five is still trying to get their bearings “What day is it?”

  
“April second, twenty nineteen” Five shakes a newspaper in front of them. “The day after the Apocalypse”

  
Klaus is not sure he gets it, not yet. His body feels like ground beef and his mind like cotton candy, but Allison’s voice perks up, incredulous but hopeful.

  
“Wait, so we stopped it?”

  
“Oh my god it’s over?!” Vanya whispers, big eyes looking at Allison for confirmation, and Klaus’ glitched thinking seems to get up with the program, finally.

  
“D-did we actually succeed at something? That’s incredible!”

  
It’s a brief respite, this euphoria he is feeling, and he knows it. Klaus’ happiness is ever fleeting, but he laughs and hugs Vanya and then Luther, even, his mind going into celebration mode.

  
He needs a drink. No, in fact, he needs several drinks, maybe even a bottle or two, and they don’t even need to be sweet or have a paper umbrella on it. For once, neither one of his siblings seems against the idea, all beaten and tired (and grieving, but they can bury those things down for long enough for a celebration, for a few weeks or years, because they are the goddamn Hargreeves). They saved the world.

  
They saved the world!

  
“I should go find Claire” Allison says, ogling the door, but Luther grabs her hand.

  
“Oh come on, one drink!” he says, because he is bossy when he is happy.  
But the parlor feels… different, when they barge into it. They can’t quite put their fingers on what is it, exactly, that is different. Until they hear someone clearing their throat.

  
They all turn at once.

  
Pogo gets up from Sir Reginald’s old chair, bad knee cracking, his beady eyes getting factually smaller before he tsk.

  
“May I inquire, when were you? And what doomsday preparations should I initiate?”

  
By the time he says initiate Vanya had thrown herself around his neck and is sobbing uncontrollably.

  
“I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry Pogo I didn’t… I understand why you did it, I do, I’m so sorry!”

  
Celebratory drinks are, of course, postponed.

  
“Can we cut down on the waterworks until we know we are on the right time line?” Five mumbles while Luther raises both Pogo and Vanya off the ground, and there is a squirrelly way in which he looks around that would have made more observant people worried. But Five is surrounded by idiots, as he always says, and Luther is also getting into the bandwagon of asking forgiveness for things that, apparently, didn’t happen in this particular point in history. Allison is grumbling about really having to go find her daughter.

  
A blue afterimage flicks into Klaus’ eyes, close to the liquor cabinet. He feels nauseated all of the sudden, the way one feels walking on the corridors of a cruise ship. Like he couldn’t exactly feel the floors moving, but he knew they must be, imperceptibly shaking him. He looks around, to see if anyone feels the same way, his eyes landing on Diego first.

  
Diego, however, is looking at Five, his features disquiet in a different way. A lot could be said about his ability to deduct and extrapolate from the data he collected, and Diego is self-aware enough to know he isn’t the best at drawing conclusions, but his observational skills had always been as sharp as his knifes. So he notices that Five isn’t relaxed yet, he notices that the Academy feels just a tad different then it was before Vanya exploded it. Different trinkets, different colors on the rug.

  
All is swoop out of his mind immediately as he sees a familiar robin blue dress turn the corner.

  
“M-mom?!”

  
“Hello kids. You’re just in time for the afternoon tea, what about some biscuits?”

  
Robots are incredibly heavy, but Diego menages to raise Mom above the ground with his hug, and then the only two of the Hargreeves children not crumbling into an emotional fest were Five and Klaus.

  
“… something is wrong.” Five says to the only person whom he could maybe have a semi rational conversation, and really what is his life that his best option for a quick debriefing is the psychic junkie?!

  
“ …yep. Got that one right, tiny.” Klaus stares at the corner. His face is guarded, and his inflection lacks the usual levity with which he treats everyone and everything. Five thinks that this maybe the the worse sigh that something is wrong that he had seen so far.

  
“What? Who’s there?” and when Klaus doesn’t respond, he snaps his fingers in front of his brother’s face. “Klaus!”

  
“What? Oh, nobody. I’m dead tired. I think I need to drink a bottle of tequila and sleep for a week just to be able to think again.”

  
And it was true, Klaus muses with himself. He is tired, and he is holding off some emotional realizations that will sure wreck him to the core. Dave is in the war (Dave is dead, died decades ago on a dirty trench in the ‘Nam, alone, hating the weird cult leader that told him to not go). Ben is gone, finally up in heaven with that bastard that refused to take Klaus in.

  
Ben is gone, right?

  
He is, Klaus decides, because he can’t… he can’t deal with having any more misguided hopes right now.

  
“Yeah, well, there is something strange about this new time line.” Five puts his hands in his pockets, eyeing Pogo and Mom, both surrounded by the others. “Feels too… orderly.”

  
“God, take a win when you have one, will ya! Jesus on a stick, such a cynical heart in a such a young body.” Klaus jokes, very deliberately not looking at the liquor cabinet anymore. “Mom, can we get the old cocktail rendevouz?! Do we have enough rum? Pogo, you were a chimp kebab last time I heard of you, so you’re drinking too, and I don’t want to hear anything about you being too old for it!”

  
It’s a party, sort of, after that. A quickly prepared party, in which even Five decided to let loose a little bit by drinking something poisonous green and sit on top of the bar. Klaus lets Mom fuss over his long hair and how he needs a proper haircut, lets himself believe the illusion of her a little bit, for the moment. “How are you, darling?” she asks, and if Klaus hadn’t studied her schematics, hadn’t seen her programming, he would believe the kindness of her voice to be genuine. Him and Five, they grew out of needing Mom pretty early on. Diego, Vanya… Klaus didn’t think they ever did.

  
“Peachy, Mom. Had a lovely vacation in the early sixties, formed a cult, got clean.” He downs the fruity thing in his hand. “Well, clean-ish. Hey Five, do you think my cult still exists? I could really freak them out if I show up now.”

  
“Nobody leave the Academy until I do the proper math, which I will do tomorrow because I need a fucking night of sleep.” He says, popping next to the bar to refill his glass. Luther toasts him, Allison frowns.

  
“No, I’m going to see my daughter. I need to see her.”

  
“Your… daughter, miss Allison?” Pogo asks, and just as it started, the party instantly die.

  
Even Vanya holds her breath, hand half raised in a gesture while she was talking to Diego.

  
“Yes.” Allison’s voice waivers a little. “My daughter. Claire.”

  
“Claire.” Repeats Pogo, having clearly never heard of the girl before.

  
“Claire. Claire Brennan. My daughter with Patrick… Claire! Pogo, you know Claire!”

  
It is becoming increasingly clear that Allison is falling right into a panic attack, and Luther abandons his glass on the bar and goes to her immediately.

  
“Hey, hey, calm down, I’m sure it’s all fine, right Five?”

  
Five doesn’t respond, eyes darting between Pogo and Allison, numbers clearly popping in his head. He never met Claire, of course, was gone way before she was ever born, but he knows about her. Klaus met his niece once, when she was a few months old and Ben had bullied him into getting sober enough to go pay a visit. Allison had seemed tired, but happy with the little bumble in her arms, admonishing Klaus to be careful while depositing the baby in his arms, talking inane things about her weight and her nap time.

  
And then of course things get weirder, because mom pulls a black square out of her skirt pocket, a cable in her arm connecting with the thing, and her eyes go unfocused, her voice turns robotic in a way it never was when they were growing up.

  
“Claire Brennan, American, six years old.” She says, and Five pops right next to her, eyes fixed on the black rectangle in her hand, where a photo of a little black girl in a fancy yellow dress is shown on a screen. “Father, Patrick Brennan, actor and director. Mother, Jasmine Cephas Jones, actress and singer.”

  
“What?! No, I’m… I’m her mother!” Allison jumps, grabs the rectangle, her finger digging in the photo of the girl like she could touch her if she tried hard enough. “I’m… this is my little girl! Mine!”

  
She is crying now, in big heaves, panic setting into her bones like a plague. Klaus knows the look, knows the feeling. And yet there isn’t much that can be done to help her, other then look at Five, who is the expert, a plea in everyone’s eyes. Allison latches onto him, letting go of the device that hangs loose by a wire from Mom’s wrist.

  
“Five, this a glitch, right? Claire is still my daughter, right?!” she is grabbing him by the arms, her eyes wide and her breath uneven. “You have to c-calculate—”

  
“Luther.” Five asks, and Luther holds Allison from behind, by her arms. She trashes against him, focus singled into shaking some sense of urgency into Five, who’s obvious at fault for this bizarre detour of reality.

  
“Allison, calm… Allison, please, breath” Luther says into her hair, as she flails.

  
“No! NO! I WANT MY DAUGHTER, I WANT TO SEE CLAIRE! LET ME GO I NEED TO SEE CLAIRE!”

  
The blue afterglow flashes into Klaus’ eyes, and for a second he thinks he can see Ben reaching to touch Allison. Then it is gone again.

  
He watches, a little numb, as Five unplugs the device out of Mom’s wrist and tells her, firmly, to get the sedative. Mom blinks once, then her normal voice comes back as she agrees and disappears from the room. Vanya goes help Luther hold Allison down, wraps as much as she can of them both in her arms. Diego’s eyes cross Klaus’, and his expression says enough.

  
Allison didn’t need this. She didn’t _deserve_ this.

  
Mom comes back with a syringe and then Alisson is deflating into Luther’s arms, her head falling into Vanya’s shoulder, mumbling between her heaving breath that she has to see her baby girl, she has to see her…

  
“Let’s move her to her bedroom, shall we?” Pogo says, gravely and worried.

  
“I got this.” Luther raises Allison’s semi conscious body into his arms, bridal style, like she weights as much as a kitten, and disappears into the foyer. Vanya shuffles in place, unsure if she should follow them, but Pogo stops her with a soft hand on her arm.

  
“Let them be… master Luther was always the only one that could calm miss Allison down.”

  
Diego, who had been extraordinarily quiet since the moment they arrived, turns to Five.

  
“What the fresh fuck is this particular bullshit, now?”

  
Five, who is inspecting the device, doesn’t raise his eyes.

  
“Can’t say for certain, not yet. I have a working theory…” he seems lost in thought, until Klaus pokes him in the head sharply and he let’s go an ‘ouch’.

  
“Care to share with the class?!” He says, exasperated, the nauseating feeling on his stomach growing by the second. Five rolls his eyes, looking simultaneously very young and fragile, and very old and tired.

  
“We changed the past, right? That was the _point_ of the whole thing. The world hasn’t ended. The cost, for what I can see, is that we changed _our_ past too.”

  
“But… this is the same girl.” Diego says, deep set scowl in his face. “I know my niece, ok? I went to see her a bunch of times. This is Alisson’s Claire. Wouldn’t she be a different girl if she had half of her genes coming from a different person?!”

  
Five begins to pace, his back curved into itself.

  
“That is an actual logical conclusion, Diego, which is unusual of you, congratulations.” Before Diego can go punch him, Klaus holds his sleeve, and Five continues to talk. “But no, that’s apparently not how it actually happens. One of the first things I asked the Commission when I begun working for them was why they just didn’t disrupt people’s sexual activities, thus ensuing that a different sperm would fertilize an egg and result in a different person, instead of the whole… ‘murder them’ thing. It doesn’t work because the exact same person is born, just conceived in a different day, or from different parents. Most people are just… meant to exist. Nobody knows why. We can change their lives and we can kill them, but we can’t stop them from being.”

  
“So…” Klaus swallows once, then again. “So Claire is Claire. But Alisson wasn’t the one to have her.”

  
“It appears to be the case.” Five goes back with fumbling with the rectangle. “There is a possibility that, for the world to continue to exist past April first twenty nineteen, Alisson could not be a mother. Or at least, not Claire’s mom. It’s… unfortunate.”

  
And he does seem bemused, angry, and sad about it. Five could pretend he had no emotional depth anymore, but Klaus could see right through him… Five had been alone for a long time, had been forced to grow up too fast and too extremely, but he wasn’t a sociopath. He didn’t want for this to be the cost of a living world.

  
“Can we fix it?” Klaus asked, voice small. He had a feeling he knew the answer.

  
“Maybe. It would risk everything we managed to do. But… maybe. I would have to calculate it.”

  
He doesn’t seem convinced. Vanya sits, covering her eyes.

  
“It’s not fair. None of this is fair.” She mutters, gesturing to the room they were in. Klaus could not possibly agree more.

  
“No, it isn’t. But… I’m more worried about this.” Five shakes the black rectangle, turning to Pogo. “Mom didn’t had access to this large of a database in the time line we left. Is this military?”

  
“It’s just a smartphone, master Five.” Pogo says, very simply, pulling a similar device from his own pocket. “They were after your time, but I believe you can buy one at the corner store in no time. Useful, but addictive little things, those.”

  
Five’s frown deepens even further. “You’re telling me everyone can have access to this giant database of information? Every civilian out there?!”

  
“Well, yes…” Pogo’s eyes are even more uncertain then they were when Alisson mentioned Claire. “That is what the internet is for.”

  
It’s Diego that asks, even though it is in everyone’s mind.

  
“What the hell is an internet?”

  
A flash of blue blinks into Klaus peripheral vision, and he closes his eyes as hard as he can and tries to swallow the taste of bile in his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On my second watching of TUA I noticed that there isn't a single computer anywhere, there isn't a smartphone in sight and everything seems kinda fifties. I went to the fandom to find out of this was just a stylistic choice and it turns out there is a theory that the first season is in an alternative universe where internet was never invented and everything is analog (probs because little Ol' Reggie putting his alien paws where he didn't belong back in the late sixties when the net was invented). I then proceed to half bake a plot based on how things would be different if they came back to, instead of a Sparrow Academy, a world where they could google shit like "strange births of non pregnant women 1989" or "what to do if you have the hots for you adoptive brother".  
> What do you think would be the first thing they would Google?


	2. A million candles burning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep on pantsing this thing like there's no tomorrow, so please inform me if anything is going horribly wrong.

The different-colored rug on the parlor in front of the fireplace feels exactly like Klaus remembers from childhood, rough and dusty. His legs are stretched in front of him, his hand loosely holding the neck of his bottle like a blankie, Vanya’s head on his shoulder as she curls to his left. 

  
‘The floor is for gays only’ he thinks, vaguely, and laughs at himself. Diego sits menspreaded on the old couch, and Klaus’ back is propped on one of his legs. Somewhere along Pogo’s long explanation of what the Internet was and how it influenced the world, Diego had begun to play with a curl on the base of his neck. Klaus didn’t think he realized what he was doing, it was just that… Pogo had a very roundabout, buttler-ry way of explaining things, and he was pretty sure the only one that was following the whole thing was Five.

Luther hasn’t come back down yet, and Klaus didn’t think he would, anyway. Probably curled on the foot of Alisson’s bed, angsting for her.

  
Or maybe he is feeling the same brain-splitting headache Klaus was, all with those Ben-Shapped-Hallucinations he is having since they arrived, and had decided to just… take a fucking break. God knew Klaus needs one, it had been a looong fucking two weeks (four years, provided his mind, four years crammed in there between the ‘Nam and the Destiny’s Children… he is four years older then two weeks ago on this fucking horrible time line of theirs). The way Vanya is rubbing her temples every once in a while, her eyes blinking rapidly, Klaus doesn’t think he is the only one in need of a nice little nap. Diego’s fingers brushing his scalp are the worst to resist… He used to do that when they were really young, when Sir would force Klaus to spend far too much time in the crypt and he couldn’t really sleep after, even in his own bed with the lights on. They were probably six or seven then, and Ben would come to his room first, to check on him, find Klaus crying with his face stuffed in the pillow to make less noise. Then he would go and fetch Diego, and Diego would sit close and play with Klaus’ hair while saying things like ‘It’s ok, you will get good at this, don’t worry, the dead people are going to be nice to you here in the Academy. Do you want me to ask Mom for a glass of warm milk?’. 

  
Platitudes. Well, what could pass for platitudes in their lives, anyway. 

  
“That is… fascinating.” Five finally says, when it appeared that Pogo’s ‘cursory’ exposition had finally ended. “Horrifying, too.” He had sat on the backrest of the couch, his feet in socks resting on the cushions, higher then the rest of them. Sir would have never allowed them to be in the parlor like this… semi drunk, badly dressed and sitting like hobos… Klaus laughs to himself again, spreading his legs more on the rug as a postumous act of rebelion. Five misinterprets him.

  
“Oh, you think I’m overreacting, Klaus? You think this isn’t a problem?”

  
“Of course is a problem, but everything is a fucking problem, isn’t it?” Klaus says, still laughing, and swings the nearly empty bottle in front of his eyes. “We, the weirdos with fucked up super powers, created a dystopian time line where for some reason the whole world is addicted to look at their friends’ pictures on a thing called ‘Facebook’ and worship fat cats? I’m shocked and appalled.” He says the last part so sarcastically that even Five very nearly smiles. 

  
Vanya stretches away from him, her head between her hands, while Klaus polishes off the rest of the rum.

  
“I’m not saying this isn’t serious, but… do you think is, like, an emergency? Like, we have to solve this tonight? Because I need some tylenol before we do.”

  
Five gives her a long look, that starts angry and ends a little softer. He was always the kindest to Vanya, when they were growing up. She was very alone when Five disappeared. 

  
“…no, I think we can sleep for tonight, start to get our bearings tomorrow. This might not be the same world we left, but as far as I can tell, it’s not ending anytime soon.” He helps her get up from the floor, he himself groaning like an old man. “And yeah, this time-displacement-hangover is going to be a bitch to deal with.”

  
“This what now?” Diego asks. “Because I though my head was on fire from all the world saving we have done the last few days.”

  
“Your’s probably is, I don’t think you have a brain complex enough to need rewiring.” Five smirks, the barb having the desired effect to make Diego’s face tense up in a scowl. “But the ones of us with a still functional mind are having a synaptic fight over simultaneous memories.”

  
Klaus stretches his arm and punch Five weakly in the leg, the only part he could reach.

  
“’Christ sake, speak English!” and Five sighs like a long suffering romantic heroine.

  
“God, I’m surrounded by idiots… The moment we landed, we got into bodies that had experienced a different past. Meaning that right now you have two memories that happened simultaneously fighting for a space in your head. We will be able to keep most of ours, probably remember some of those we didn’t actually lived. But its going to be a few days of this shit.” He points at his temple. “Why do you think I drink so much coffee?”

“Wait… get memories? From thinks we didn’t live?” Vanya scrunches her face. “I don’t… I don’t like this. My memories are still so…”

  
“Raw fish, bone broth and avocados. I’ll ask Mom to arrange it for tomorrow.” Five says, like it is a logical sequitor. “For now… bed. I’ve been awake for far too long and I’m too fucking old for this shit. Our bedrooms are livable, Pogo?”

  
“Always, master Five.” Pogo says, very seriously. Klaus wonders, not for the first time, if Pogo lived his life waiting for them to come back and be the Umbrella Academy again. For Dad it had always been an experiment, but for Pogo…

  
“Good. Have a lovely rest of the night, everyone.” Five says, one of those little psychotic smiles of him playing on his lips, and then in a flash of blue he is gone.

  
Klaus ignores the other flash of blue, farther away close to the wall, and gets up with a grunt and unsteady legs. 

  
“Aaaaand that’s my cue. If I don’t show up for lunch assume I died or run away or was taken by time assassins or some other shit.”

  
Klaus makes a detour to the bar, grabs another bottle at random and curses all those damn stairs on his way up, mumbling about how Five could just pop in his room and not deal with them. 

  
Alisson’s door is closed, Luther’s is open, the empty room inside bathed in the neon light of the street outside, as Klaus looks at the corridor. Vanya’s door was first, then him, then Diego, then the two lovebirds at the end. Five would be one floor over on his little attic hideout of a room, opposed to Ben’s empty one. Ben’s room has always been empty, even when he was alive… he used to sneak downstairs and sleep with Klaus on the mattress they hid behind the wardrobe, whenever Dad decided not to wire them in their sleep.

  
Klaus never wanted to be alone with his ghosts, Ben never wanted to be alone with his monsters, and they made it work. They made it work…

  
The room that greats him smells of candle wax and old smoke, and he only turn on the Christmas lights around his bed to be able to take his pants off and find his pillows. The psychedelic posters on his walls are barely visible, and he is sufficiently tired and drunk that the constant background noise of the whispers of the dead are easily ignored. He hopes he will pass out soon, but of course this doesn’t happen. The Ben-Shapped-Lights flash around him once, and again a few minutes later, like they had all night. It must be the time-hangover thing, Klaus decides… rewiring of the brain.

  
It hurts in a way that has nothing to do with the splitting headache he feels, hurts in a way that makes Klaus put the new bottle on his mouth and drink from it until there is booze dripping down his chin and on the bed. This useless, cursed power of his, having all those pestilent, oozing specters at his back and call and… And yet the ones he missed the most, Klaus can’t reach. Not Dave, who was good and kind and beautiful and was sure in whatever better place the dead went to when they decided to go.

  
And now, not Ben. Klaus never had to grief the loss of Ben before, and he doesn’t know if he can now. Every time he tries to think that his brother is gone, for real, his mind sort of… skip it. It is true, but it isn’t. Ben is gone, but Ben is just a little over the veil, close enough, and Klaus could just try and focus and call him back and… and he wont try, because if he tries and fail, then Ben is really gone. 

  
Klaus can’t accept that, not just yet. In the morning, maybe, or maybe when he have to stop drinking. 

  
(Klaus could drink for months, never sober enough to think clearly, never drunk enough to stop functioning. He could drink for _months_!)

  
There is a creak at the floorboards in front of his closed door, and Klaus hears whispers. Not the whispers of the deceased, though, but anxious, quiet whispers of one of the occupants of the house. Swinging his legs out of the bed, he presses an ear to the door.

  
“I nearly stabbed you!” Of course, Diego was making the rounds. Of course he was, that vigilant complex of his.

  
“Sorry! Sorry, I… I couldn’t sleep. It’s… claustrophobic in there.”

  
Vanya. Not a good idea to try and stab Vanya. 

  
There is a pause.

  
“I hate my room too.” Diego is softer now. “Wish I could go back to the gym.”

  
“…I don’t even know if I have a house in this time line. Can you imagine, all of us, living here again?” Klaus can hear a little uneasy laugh. Then silence, and for long enough that Klaus decides to risk cracking his door open.

  
Diego has both arms around Vanya, who is clutching the front of his old shirt with both hands, her face hidden on his chest. They both raise their faces to Klaus.

  
“Sorry, we woke you up?” Diego asks, so careful and soft that Klaus’ heart ache, for a moment, almost as much as his head.

  
“Wasn’t sleeping yet.” He hesitates for just a second, before opening his door wilder. “Come on, sleepover. _Mi casa es su casa_.”

  
Diego begins to protest, but Vanya’s eyes lit up, and Klaus beat himself up for being an asshole to her during their entire childhood. Little Vanny, tucked away in her tiny room practicing violin and hearing him and Ben goof off all night one room over. And now here he was, depression-drinking over long dead people, forgetting to be grateful for the siblings he has left, the siblings he can still say the things he wants to say to. 

  
“You know, Ben used to sleep here all the time when we were little.” Klaus says, fishing the mattress from behind wardrobe. “Remember, Diego? You would too, sometimes.”

  
“Your room is the biggest.” Diego justifies, a little embarrassed.

  
“I… heard.” Vanya looks around, a little bit like she isn’t sure she is welcome, still.

  
“…sorry we never invited you.” Klaus lets the mattress fall on the floor with a big plop. “We were such dicks to you, weren’t we?”

  
“No.” Vanya looks Klaus in the eyes, all seriousness and intensity that was so typical of her. “Dad was the horrible one. Dad made us like this, like… all this garbage fire we are. He used to keep me close, you know, when you guys were training.” She made a vague boxing gesture with her hands. “Made me hold the timer, make the notes. I deluded myself into thinking this was his way of caring for me, even when I wasn’t special… but it wasn’t that. He was just keeping an eye on me to see if I would begin to remember. It was also a way to keep me away from the rest of you, isolated. And it worked, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  
“Oh Vanny…” Klaus says at the same time Diego mutters “Every time I think I understand every horrible thing he did…”

  
She smiles at them, a little sad, but genuine nonetheless.

  
“Well, fuck him. I’m here now and he isn’t.” She sits on Klaus bed, and Diego says “Damn right”. They fix the room like they used to, Vanya on Klaus’ bed and Diego sprawled on the big chair that reclined, while Klaus talks about his cult from the floor. He flourishes it a bit.

  
“We did a whole ceremony on some random Texan river like it was the Ganges, I wore a little linen loincloth and a hundred people stood around me and chanted my name and put flower necklaces on my head, all because some Scorpions lyrics. Remember? It’s, hum… _you fiiind me, you can find me, by the river where dreams will never diiie_ ” He sing, badly, waving his hands to an imaginary rhythm while Vanya laughs quietly into his pillow and Diego hide his face in his hands and shake his head disapprovingly to pretend he wasn’t laughing too. “Then we parked the bus on some random field and did a giant orgy with rose petals and milk baths on little kiddie pools.”

  
Klaus had woken up from that one to a whole new level of stickiness and smelling faintly of yogurt. Ben was hovering over him that day, face scrunched in concentration to be able to poke Klaus in the ribs. ‘You’re going to get sunburned’ he had said, when Klaus swatted him away.

  
Ben fleshes in the corner of his eye, somewhere over Diego. Diego, who is looking at him with a sneer of disgust.

  
“That is so nasty, Klaus, good god!”

  
“I don’t know, sounds fun.” Vanya says, and they all know full well she would never, in a million years, fuck dozens of strangers in public like that. 

  
“Hey, kept me flexible!” And sober, more or less. It was well into the stage where Klaus was being watched by followers most of the time, and Ben had convinced him that if he wanted to keep that stupid shit going, he needed to look like a put together leader. So they only did drugs during special bi-monthly moon rituals. “I can take dick upside down while fondling two sets of breasts simultaneously now.” 

  
It was expected that Vanya would snort and call his bullshit, but Klaus notices Diego turning his head away and closing his eyes for a second, as if assaulted by the mental image, and once again Klaus decides to be as queer as possible around his straight brothers just for the fun of torturing them. 

  
“Ok, remind me to play ‘Where the River Flows’ tomorrow… I’m pretty sure I can do it from memory.” Vanya hums the song while playing some imaginary violin while staring into the ceiling. 

  
They talk a little more, mostly Klaus telling stories about the Destiny Children, with Diego begrudgingly talks about how he met Lila at the nut-house and how she would make him want to claw his eyes out with her incessant shit-talking so he obviously fell for her, duh! But pretty soon Vanya’s words turn slurred and the little they could see of her in the faint light was showing slower and slower blinking. Diego told her to try to sleep a little, they all should try if they wanted to wake up in some reasonable hour tomorrow.

  
But Klaus notices, ten minutes into silence, that Diego is moving around his chair a lot. 

  
“Still can’t sleep? I have a little medicine…” he whispers, reaching for his bottle that had been forgotten when they decided on the sleepover.

  
“No, thanks.” Diego murmurs back, dry voice. Then. “This chair used to be a lot bigger, wasn’t it?”

  
“You were a lot smaller.” Klaus raises his head to look at Diego, chews on the decision for a couple of seconds, then scooch further away, holding his blanket up. “Come here. You’re going to wake up all twisted if you sleep there.”

  
It is probably a proof of their tiredness, or maybe of the unprocessed traumas, that Diego doesn’t even try to protest this time. He grabs his pillow and trows it almost on Klaus face and then plops himself on the mattress, a grunt of satisfaction as he stretches his back.

  
“Better.” He mutters, right as Klaus angry whispers for him to not take that much fucking space. They slap-fight silently for a few seconds and then Diego pulls Klaus closer and shush him. “Sleep.” He orders.

  
Klaus see a flash of blue on the chair Diego is no longer occupying, so he hides his face on Diego’s chest and closes his eyes as much as he can, and if Diego notices him grabbing his t-shirt too tight, he doesn’t comment on it.


End file.
